


the girl she was

by onewingedbird



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-20 16:18:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18528649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onewingedbird/pseuds/onewingedbird
Summary: He loves this woman, and she is fading in front of him.





	the girl she was

Her breath comes fast and breathy in his ear. She quivers around him and takes her pleasure. Sansa with her hair fanning her face and red coloring her cheeks. She cries out; he follows after her, and he can almost believe that what they have is enough.

They say that love is the beginning and end of everything. It’s what happens in the middle he worries over.

There’s no advice to be given, no action he can take. He loves this woman. He loves how quickly her mood sours, each smile no matter how small he is able to draw from her. He craves every intimacy and look. He loves this woman, and she is fading in front of him.

He doesn’t talk to her about it. It’s more unbearable to watch her force herself to rise from bed, bathe and dress, each activity taking longer than the last. She walks the halls of Winterfell and performs an hour’s duties in a day. He sits in their study, getting even less done as he watches her fidget with these papers then these scrolls, mind moving from one issue to another, eyes glossing over and coming back sharply with an exhale.

Some days, she eats only a bread roll; others, she has them make her a pile of lemon cakes and eats them until she sicks up. He smoothes the wrinkle in her brow with a gentle thumb. He doesn’t understand her. She tells him she doesn’t understand herself.

The maester gives her herbs. Leeches. It’s all for naught. Ghost begs for her attention. He lays on the bed with his head on his paws and stares at her dolefully. He can walk the grounds without her but he stays at her side. Jon does not wonder why, not after the day when he came back to their rooms to a blood-red bath. Ghost watches over her while Jon attends his duties as king.

In the songs, a love like theirs transcends past pain.

Arya throws the window shade open, pulls the covers off of Sansa, screams. She calls her all manner of horrible things and accuses her of not loving her, not loving Jon. Sansa’s effort gives them her dressed in the same room. She frustrates at being spoken to and has little to say herself. She tries. But a man with a broken leg can only force himself to walk for so long. Eventually, it will crumble beneath him and be worse than before.

It’s different when he touches her. That dimness in her eyes brightens. She is wanton and urges him to use her body as she uses his. Faster, harder, rougher, she wants to feel the bruises on her skin. It’s the only time she can feel something, she tells him after.

She spends hours in the bath. The skin of her feet whitens before she makes herself stand and settle into bed again. He has to rub oil into the skin to stop it from feeling like it will simply peel away.

“I stopped trying.”

“What?” He looks up from his task.

“To find her.”

“Who?”

Her shoulders drop an inch and she pulls her feet up onto the bed. She lies on her side. He pulls the covers up to her chin and places a kiss on her forehead. His hand lingers, waiting, waiting, and then he leaves.

He only remembers later. Once, she’d asked him to send her away to the Silent Sisters. The Faith would know what to do with something like her, she’d said. She is neither here nor anywhere. Could it be her lack of love for the gods that makes her so? She’d fought him then but sobbed in relief when he’d won the battle, clutching him to her. She’d took him there on the floor shaking with tears and ecstasy.

He brushes her hair until it gleams. He reads to her. Her needlework is begun and stopped by the end of the third page. She has been making this item for three moons’ turns. She’d told him once what it was but the answer changes.

How much she loves him is something grotesque. He is the only bright spot in a dark castle, but she has to travel further and further to find him in the room he stays. He is right here. He will always be right here. She turns her face away. He doesn’t understand. Her hand is limp over his heart. She tires of these conversations more easily. She needs him, but he is failing her.

“Do you hate me?”

It is the question he asks most often. It seems every fortnight these words are falling from his lips. If it is the marriage she wants to escape, he would let her go if it meant she would be happy. She does not seek him out. She dismisses him like Ghost with a sharp word on the worst days. Hate, he could fathom. If she could tell him what he’s done to earn her ire, he would change it. He would make amends. He would do anything.

This answer stays the same. “You’re the only one I love.”

Today, her voice is broken and soft. She looks up at him with that uncertain gaze. Relief softens his expression. There she is. His laugh turns to a sob, and he is kissing her. He holds her to him and tells her mundane things she can't fake an interest in on other days. He tells her Arya sends her love from Braavos. He caresses her cheek and relishes in her fingers in his hair, her nose rubbing against his when he makes a good jape, these touches that do not lead anywhere. Seeing her come alive during a coupling is an exquisite agony. But to have her tease him and chide him, to have her look at him the way she is now is pure joy.

She is gone in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to do a short thing showcasing the cyclical nature of depression. Hope you liked it!


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